Improvement in laying- street-pavements



awed $111525,

strut can Letters Patent No. ill 5,062, dated October 19, 1869.

IMPROVEMENT IN LAYING- STREET-PAVEMENTS. I

The Schedule referred to in these Letters Patent and making part of the same.

To all towlwm these presents shall come Be it known that I, GARDNER. WARREN, of Boston, in the county of Suffolk, and Commonwealth of Massachusetts, have made aninvention. of a new and useful Mode or Process of Laying Street-Pavements; and do hereby declare the nature of such process, and its advantages, to be herein fully set forth and explained.

Heretofore, in proceeding to deposit pavements in streets, whether such pavements were iron, stone, or wood,.tl1e roadway was left in the state which the soil would naturally assume uponv being dumped thereupon.

In laying wooden pavements, a substratum or flooring of wood is first deposited upon the loose sand or gravel,-and the wooden blocks composing, in the aggregate, the pavement, laid upon it, whether such flooring be of continuous strips, or with intervening them, but necessitating frequent repairs, at consider-- able expense and labor.

The repairs often found necessary upon sewers, gas and water-pipes, 850., require a pavement to be taken In this case, much time and labor are consumed in removing, and, more especially, in replacing portions of the flooring of wooden pavements, as at present laid.

The motives which actuated me in conducting the experiments culminating in the process herein described have been twofold: first, to obviate the difii culties before mentioned, and, second, to produce a wooden pavement of considerable less cost than others in use.

My process consists as follows:

The roadiug of the street is first brought to the dled with water, preferably by elevating such water to considerable height, and allowing it to fall in an extended spray, or in any way by which thesoilshall become thoroughly saturated, the result being a uniform, even, and very solid mass, which'becomes the foundation of the pavement.

An ordinary street-sprinkler would perhaps, be the most available means'of disiributiugwater upon the road-bed.

Upon the foundation, thus prepared, the pavement is to be directly laid, in any well-known manner.

Should this pavement be composed of wood, its surface is to be covered with sand and water, applied as before explained, by which means the interstices between the blocks are instantly filled, thus avoiding the loss of time, as well as additional expenditure of animal labor, attendant upon the plan heretofore practised in similar cases, of throwing dry sand upon the pavement, and allowing time, and the travel over it, to etfect the proper packing of the interstices.

Although the practice of puddliug sand and gravel, for various purposes, has long been in use, it has never,

so far asmy knowledge extends, been applied to the preparation'of road-beds as a foundation for pave In'ents.

Claim.

What I claim as my invention, and desire to secure by Letters Patent of the United States, is-

The process .hereinbefore explained, of laying streetpavements, the same consisting, in brief, of first grading the road-bed, next puddliug the mass of soil, and, after depositing the pavement thereupon, packing the interstices between the blocks of the latter, by means of sand and Water.

GARDNER WARREN.

Witnesses v FRED. Oun'rrs, EDWARD Gnrtrrrn. 

